County residents show support for Pocopson Home

If the Chester County commissioners had any questions about the level of support from residents for the continued county-led operation of Pocopson Home, the long care and senior facility south of West Chester, they got a series of vociferous answers in 2012.

At three well-attended public meetings, hundreds of people turned out to tell the commissioners that they did not favor changing the ownership of the much-loved facility, no matter that the current financial difficulties Pocopson may be facing.

At a May meeting in Uwchlan, the crowd seemed solidly behind the notion that Pocopson should remain in public hands and not those of a private operator. “I think that privatization, although no one wants to see their taxes increased, could be disastrous for the residents and the staff,” said resident Ann Bird of West Pikeland.

“I think that Pocopson should remain a county-owned facility, just as we control our roads and our bridges and our liquor stores,” said Frank Moon of Pennsbury. “We need to be able to find taxpayer dollars to support these 300 people.”

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Very few of those who spoke at any of the three meetings – one in West Chester, one in Lionville, and one in Oxford – made the point that the facility should be sold or turned over to a non-profit board, two of the options that the commissioners were considering based on a study of the facility done by a private consulting firm.

Pocopson faces questions about its future because revenues from the Medicare and Medicaid patients it serves are dropping while capital costs are looming. The county, which once saw the home providing revenue, now sees operating losses at the facility, according to the study completed by a King of Prussia-based health care consultant.

In a presentation meant to focus on the home’s finances, officials with Premier Healthcare Resources, the county’s consultant, showed projected costs that would see the county’s loss at Pocopson rise from $1.6 million to $1.8 million in 2012, to $3.1 million in 2016.

By year’s end, no decision on the future of the facility had been made. Commissioners said they were waiting for their consultants to report on the possibility of adding revenue at Pocopson through out-patient or other services.